


Where Dogs Have No Noses

by Tierfal



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But it does hurt. Everything hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Dogs Have No Noses

They never did go to Barcelona.

They're strange, the noseless dogs—there's something profoundly unnatural about them, something unsettling that tickles a little and starts to itch. Big dogs, little dogs, curly-haired or short—you look without thinking for a snuffle and a twitch, but the line of the muzzle just… ends. That's all she wrote.

The Barcelonans don't find it strange, of course. It's all in order, as far as they're concerned, because they don't know any other dogs than the noseless kind. That'd be weird, to them, dogs with noses—that'd be the wrongness, because experience is all anyone has to go on.

You don't know what's missing until you've seen what it looks like when the space is filled.

Everything feels a little empty now.

He is dogged—as it were—by the wispy trails of the things he would have said. The things he meant to say.

The whole continuum spreads out before him and behind, but there's never enough _time_.

It's funny—two hearts. They beat in sequence, but they break in unison. Maybe they're the cause of it, what's made him mad and wild and so damned infatuated with the danger, but even two hearts can't hold this. Two hearts can't hold him together.

After all this time, after nine hundred years, after Gallifrey, it shouldn't hurt to lose things anymore. He should be accustomed to it.

But it does hurt. Everything hurts.

His mind aches—not his head; his mind. There's just too much in it—too much that he knows, too much that he doesn't know, too much he wants to, too much he can't. The sheer volume of material is cowing—overwhelming now, overflowing, like a mist of golden particles spilling past his lips, because there's no one to direct it to. There's no one to share his world with, which means there's no one to share the burden of it.

That's why he's seeking out a dying star.

That's why he's taking a risk that might rip the TARDIS to pieces and destroy the last good thing he has.

She was—she is—she had been—everything he could have asked for, if he'd had the words. She was bright and dauntless, clever, vibrant, fascinated—so _alive_. Young and beautiful and new. Sometimes you forget how grand it is, how vast and incredible the universe can be, unless you're showing it to someone else. The joy is in giving it. The joy is in seeing it reflected in someone else's eyes.

She had that. She had the hunger for it, and the wonder. She was enthralled and insatiable, and neither of them ever would have tired of it—not when it was theirs, together.

That's why he's flitting like a moth around the controls, and that's why he's gritting his teeth and hoping so hard his head rings. That's why it hurts, and that's why he needs to tell her now—too late and just short of never.

He'll tell her, too, that he's sorry—sorry for all of it. Sorry to have broken his promises. Sorry to have given her everything only to let it be stolen away. Sorry that the one thing he didn't know—that he never meant—that he'd always dreamed it would be different this time—

He'll tell her that he wishes he could have taken her to Barcelona, where she would have knelt and beckoned to the first dog she'd seen. She would have gasped, and stared, and scratched behind its ears, and he would have stood back, watching, hands in his pockets, until she turned to share a smile. He would have humored her as she exclaimed about it, he would have rattled off an explanation, and her delight would have been catching. He would have showed her everything, and she would have loved it. She would have loved him.

And nothing would have been missing then.


End file.
